If you're interested in Thai culture, take a look at my Thai cinema and book recommendations.
I’ve now spent six months listening exclusively to Thai music and I really love it. Every time I go back to Thailand I’m excited to get back into Thai music, and whenever I leave I find it hard to give it up. It plays in my head for weeks after I stop listening to it, and it makes me very sad. I am writing this a few months after leaving Thailand, and I’m writing it from memory with an emotional distance, rather than listening to the music and bearing the pain of not being in Thailand. I will continually update this on future trips, though.
I’ll write this mostly chronologically, covering different eras and genres of Thai music, and I should note that my biases are towards the music of the 70s and 80s, and the stuff that sounds more Thai (so, usually the luk thung music). Most Thai popular music today doesn’t sound Thai at all and doesn’t really excite me, though there’s some that I like.
Before going into my recommendations I’ll list some good resources for finding and learning more about Thai music, as well as some places in Thailand you can go for live Thai music.
If you want to learn more about Thai music, I recommend the book Luk Thung: The Culture and Politics of Thailand's Most Popular Music by James Leonard Mitchell. I greatly enjoyed it, and you can read further thoughts in my book recommendations post. Here’s a very short powerpoint from the writer covering some of the basics (with an amazing song in the background). His Youtube channel also has tons to listen to, highly recommended: https://www.youtube.com/@ThaiMusicandDance/playlists. He did a Reddit AMA which is worth going through if you want to learn more, it’s basically a preview of what’s in the book, and here’s a good interview.
The other highly recommended resource for Thai music is the amazing blog Monrakplengthai (I believe translating to “Thai music love story”), which usually updates every few weeks with an old, obscure Thai album (often but not exclusively Luk Thung) that they digitize and upload. It is run by an enthusiast named Peter Doolan who also provides some background information on the artists and music, and there is sometimes more good information in the comments. I love having some context for what I’m listening to, so this is a gold mine, and the music is wonderful. The links on the right hand side of the page are also great. This is one of my favorite websites on the entire internet and every time I’m back in Thailand I excitedly catch up on the latest posts. On Doolan’s Youtube is a documentary on Thai music which I’ve yet to watch. I don’t know anything about Doolan, but he was involved in the discovery/promotion of Khun Narin and was part of Mitchell’s book as well.
One last great resource is Zudrangma Records, a record label and store based in Bangkok which puts out a lot of old Thai albums (often Luk Thung). You can click around on the website and usually listen to at least a few songs from each album. There’s not a ton of background information given, but the concise descriptions such as “Deep 60s Ramwong Groove in Lae vocal with Buddhism teaching lyrics” tell you all you need to know. I regret that I haven’t had a chance to go to their store in Bangkok yet. They also have a live music venue Studio Lam which I admit doesn’t seem like my vibe, but the modern molam band Paradise Bangkok Molam International Band sometimes plays there and they’ve had some old luk thung icons play in the past, which I would love to experience.
A few more resources: Here’s a rundown on Thai music (from 2010) by Joe Cummings, covering some genres that I’m not. Here is the introduction to the Rough Guide compilation of Thai music which you can stream here.
I’m not the biggest live music fan, but I do like hearing more traditional music live, with all live instruments. This is not easy to find, but it can happen. I got to see a variety performance once at a temple festival in a village, which was a special experience and I hope to go to more of them. Though temple festivals happen all the time somewhere or the other, I have no idea how to find them. Gracious Thai readers, please invite me to temple festivals! I sometimes see old men playing the khaen or some other traditional instrument at night markets. That always makes me happy, and I always donate to them.
The one place to reliably hear good live Thai music is Bangkok’s Tep Bar, a place I love and go to on every Bangkok trip. I’m not into bars or loud music, but this is a great, unique experience with an ensemble playing traditional instruments, doing a mix of traditional songs and more modern Thai songs done in an unusual way. I’d love an album from them. Good food too (if expensive for what it is, but you’re paying for the music), and my wife loves the Thai rice alcohol which is really hard to find in Bangkok. It’s a small place so make a reservation. It’s usually around half Thais and half foreigners there.
For a very different sort of Thai music experience in Bangkok, not as much my thing but still very fun, is Tawandang, a massive German-style brewery with very over the top performances that I’d describe as Vegasy. I thought it sounded touristy, but it was probably 95% Thai people there. They have a few branches, I went to the Rama III location in Bangkok, and note that there are many places with similar names that are not affiliated. Not for everyone, but I loved it. The music is more in the modern Luk Thung vein with its cheesy country rock style that doesn’t really do it for me as music, but I embraced the vibe and had a great time. The food was mediocre (at least as a vegetarian), but my wife liked the beer. It’s a massive place but you should still make a reservation.
And if you’re in Chiang Mai, I highly recommend the wonderful restaurant Huan Soontaree, owned by the singer Soontaree Vechanont. You’ll want to make a reservation. The northern Thai food is great, it’s a really lovely setting with Lanna style architecture on the river, and Soontaree performs there every night with a small backing band. Listen to this great album โฟล์คซองคำเมือง by her and her former collaborator Jaran Manophet. One of my favorite Thai albums (but possibly some of it is in the Lanna language?), and something different from everything else I’m recommending, with a mix of northern Thai music and American country/folk/bluegrass. It is a mix of duets and solo songs from the two artists. My favorite songs are ฮานี้บ่าเฮ้ย, the second to the last song, and สาวเชียงใหม่, the third song. (I don’t have any background for this album. Google translates it to “Folk Songs in Northern Thai.” I don’t know if it’s a studio album or greatest hits, nor do I know if these are all originals or if some are traditional songs done in a different way.)
Recommendations
Most of what I’m recommending should be on Spotify or Youtube Music, but I’ll give some links when I see them.
Classical Music & Folk Music
I’ll start my recommendations with Thai classical music. I honestly don’t know much about it but I always enjoy listening to it when I’m in Thailand. I usually just search for it and click around on Youtube or Spotify, and I listen to the albums of Fong Naam. I tend to find it to be pretty repetitive but I like it, and it goes well with the pomp of the historical sites of royal Bangkok. I will devote more time to this on future trips. I hope you like xylophones, otherwise you might go insane from this. I may not ever love Thai classical music but I do think I’ll love the film The Overture.
I also recommend some folk music which you’ll find in collections like Music of Thailand by Smithsonian Folkways. It’s not the most riveting stuff, but I like to see how these traditional works developed into something more exciting and appealing (to me) over time.
(The most exciting Thai folk music is molam, which I decided to lump with luk thung later on.)
Phleng Thai Sakon (Thai oldies)
I’ll next recommend some of the western inspired Thai music of the mid 20th century. There’s a great collection Begging the Moon: Phleng Thai Sakon & Luk Krung, 1945-1960. It’s not the most innovative stuff but it’s incredibly sweet, charming, romantic music that evokes sepia-tinted picture-postcard old world urban Thailand. Whenever I hear it I get a pretty vivid image of a Thai woman in colorful clothes carrying a colorful parasol shopping for vegetables as horse carriages go down the street lined with cute wooden houses. I hope that sounds good to you. It’s probably better for people who already have a romantic attachment to Thailand and want a soundtrack for its old neighborhoods.
The “Phleng Thai Sakon” of the title translates to “international-style Thai music” and that developed into “Luk Krung” which means “child of the city” and basically refers to city music of a certain period (I couldn’t tell you the dividing line between the two genres). There’s more Luk Krung to listen to but I mostly don’t find it to be so interesting. Like Thai Frank Sinatra type of stuff. I like the Luk Krung when they’re singing it live at Methavalai Sorndaeng (one of my favorite restaurants in Bangkok) but I never feel compelled to listen to it.
Luk Thung & Molam
That brings us to Luk Thung & Molam, which is the bulk of what I listen to in Thailand (I’ll give some overview mixed with recommendations, and then will give a bunch of recommendations at the end). Luk thung translates to “children of the field” and refers to Thai “country music.” Compared to luk krung, this is more rooted in Thai folk music and the themes are more centered on issues of the lower classes. Many songs are about agriculture or on the struggles of laborers who came from the countryside to work in Bangkok. I always hear these songs playing at market stalls, but never at the mall or cafes, and in most of the movies I see when luk thung is played it’s usually in a comic way, associated with goofy village characters.
Musically, this is amazing stuff that blew my mind when I first heard it. There’s a large range within luk thung, which has absorbed outside influences and adapted with the times, and there are also regional differences based on the local folk styles the music was inspired from (or at least that’s how it was several decades back, I think the music is more homogenized now).
I don’t really understand most of the regional nuances (or accents), partly because the different styles have fused together, and I’m not yet familiar with the regional folk styles that inspired them. However, the molam music from northeast Thailand (Isaan province) and Laos is very distinctive, and it has had a big influence on luk thung. Some key features of molam are the prominent khaen (bamboo mouth organ), phin (a string instrument, now usually electric), and rap-like singing over repetitive music. Many major luk thung artists come from Isaan, and the Isaan influence has arguably seeped its way into luk thung music as a whole. Here is what a more traditional molam album sounds like, and you’ll hear in many later albums how it evolved with more modern sounds.
One analogy a lot of people make to explain the influence of northeastern music on broader Thai popular music is to look at the contributions African Americans have made to American music, and the analogy extends to their social status and overall influence on the culture as well. It may be a simplistic comparison to make things comprehensible to foreigners, but it seems to work reasonably well. If I recall correctly from the book I read, luk thung superstar Suraphol Sombatcharoen (who is awesome) was compared to Elvis in a cultural appropriation sense in how he is a central Thai singer who took northeastern styles and popularized them for a central Thai audience, though this was apparently done out of an effort to chase an Isaan audience. This isn’t something that will likely impact your listening much, but it’s fun to have some sense of these cultural dynamics which can act as an introduction to certain aspects of Thai culture.
Though I don’t always get the regional nuances, the genre's evolution over the decades gives it very distinctive subcategories that often follow international trends. The early luk thung has a lot of jazz and Latin elements. My favorite era was the 70s, when there was a heavy funk, soul, and psychedelic rock influence that was partly the result of Thai artists playing in bands for American troops and later bringing those elements and instruments into luk thung after the troops left. (My initial reaction when I started listening to this era of luk thung was “Does the RZA know about this?!”) Next came a disco and synth pop influence. Once the genre got to the 90s I started to lose interest as live instruments fell out of favor and songs started to sound like Thai-inflected Ricky Martin knockoffs that just make me think of cheesy aerobics routines. But everyone has their preferences, you can like what you like.
Though I’m citing these foreign styles, the music is always Luk Thung first, always uniquely Thai, and it fuses the disparate elements really well and sometimes brilliantly. This is different from Luk Krung and subsequent western inspired genres (“string music” and later T-Pop) which usually just feel like Thai singing over western style pop songs. That’s not something I find so interesting, though there is some of that which I love and will include at the end.
For me, luk thung music as a genre stands out more than specific artists, albums, or songs. As an outsider I have a hard time keeping track of it. Though I’ve mentioned some good resources above, I still feel there’s a lack of information in English so it’s hard for me to learn more about individual artists (especially songwriters and producers, which I’m more drawn to than singers) and understand their different styles and how their careers progressed. I hope someone puts out a massive Luk Thung encyclopedia one day. Other than a few superstars, I often don’t really know who I’m listening to and just listen pretty randomly, browsing on Youtube or Monrakplengthai and some of the other resources I listed above.
Also, a lot of luk thung music is very repetitive and I have a hard time telling songs apart. This isn’t the case for all of it, but it’s definitely the case for a lot of it. There are albums where I hardly notice where one song ends and another begins. This is an awesome album (molam inspired luk thung, or just molam?) but skim around and tell me if you think it sounds like an album of different songs or just one long song. Maybe if I understood Thai I’d be able to tell songs apart better. I have favorite luk thung songs in my head, but I have no clue what the titles or lyrics are or how to find them, and sometimes I hear a song and I’m like “Oh this is that song I love!” only for another song to come on later where I’m like “Or wait, maybe this is the song I love?”, and then I wonder if the song I think I love is really just a vocal pattern/rhyme scheme that is a recurring motif in luk thung music.
There’s a lot of fun innuendos in the lyrics, and a lot of it is very clever (going by some of the accurate translations I’ve come across), but unfortunately that aspect is mostly off limits to me. Though I can’t understand the lyrics, I find that translating the song titles enhances the listening experience (though unfortunately translating full song lyrics usually fails for me). Many are simple enough to give you an understanding of what the song is about.
Take this great album by Tueanchai Bunphraraksa (very funky stuff!), for example, which contains songs such as “Slum Girl is Sad,” “Fresh Fish Seller,” “Compete to Find Boyfriend,” and my personal favorite “Grandma Chim Collects Mushrooms.” Another great album, this one by Sorapet Phinyo, contains classics such as “Rice Farmer Boy, Salt Farmer Girl” (the full lyrics of this are in the James Leonard Mitchell book), “Spread a Mosquito Net and Wait for Wife,” and “Saying Goodbye to Girlfriend to Go Fight.” I tend to prefer those older styles of luk thung to the newer stuff, but I’m fond of the relatively recent “I’m Afraid of Geckos” partly because of the title but also because of how it incorporates gecko sounds into the music.
Somewhat related, the median album with a water buffalo on the cover is superior to the median album without a water buffalo on the cover. You might think this is just a mental thing but I have tested this empirically and can confirm it’s true.
I haven’t watched many luk thung videos, but I’ve seen a few that have been quite good and have added to my appreciation of the songs and the genre. I really like this video for a Tai Orathai song that translates to Wildflowers in the Concrete Jungle. It’s a really nicely done short film about a young girl trying to make it in the big city, a common luk thung theme. The song is an example of more modern luk thung that I actually like, though I swear there are hundreds of songs that sound exactly the same. Maybe this was the urtext, though.
There are luk thung films too. I haven’t seen any. The pioneering luk thung musical is the 1970 film Mon Rak Luk Thung. Great soundtrack, I especially love the song Mae Roi Chai. The acclaimed director Pen-ek Ratanaruang later made a luk thung tribute film Monrak Transistor, which played in the Director’s Fortnight section at Cannes in 2002. I’m excited to watch both of those, though I’m not sure if good prints are available to watch anywhere. Nothing else is on my radar at the moment.
Now I’ll give some recommendations, but honestly, as I said, the genre stands out to me more than specific artists. Just go through Monrakplengthai. I’m usually more into albums than playlists and compilations, but there are a lot of great luk thung compilations geared at westerners. The record label Sublime Frequencies has a bunch, with some that focus on molam and others that focus more on funk/soul inspired music (IIRC not all of it is necessarily luk thung and there are some knockoffs in here). Sublime Frequencies also has some documentaries. Soundway Records is another boutique label putting out wonderful compilations. Zundrangma has some great ones, including Disco Molam, Suphanburi Soul, and Theppabutr Productions (good background info on there too). If you browse around there is much more where these came from, all of it awesome (even the knockoffs).
For some specific artists not yet linked to, I’ll now list some artists that I’m fond of, though these are just the bigger names that everyone knows. I must dig deeper. Usually I like to link to specific songs and albums but as I mentioned with luk thung I just find it difficult to keep track of them, and it doesn’t help that the artists have massively long discographies.
Suraphol Sombatcharoen - The icon. His music is older than the other stuff I’m linking, from the 50s and 60s and with a different feel. Dok Fa Muang Thai is one favorite song. Here’s one playlist, just browse around for more, it’s all great.
Dao Bandon - Super funky! Here’s a great album called Kon Kee Lang Kwai (Man On A Water Buffalo), but keep clicking around, it’s all good.
Phumphuang Duangchan - Luk thung goes 80s pop, and I still love it. I went through all of her many many albums on Spotify and Youtube and thought they were good but didn’t note down standouts, but I did write that “Phumphuang albums hang noi thoi nit and krasae redefined luk thung.” I must have read that somewhere and copied it down, apologies to whoever I am failing to credit. She has a number of songs I love, the only one I noted down is Chan Plao Na Khao Ma Eng. I don’t know the rest of the titles and don’t feel like searching for them. You’ll do well enough with any random playlist. Here are some translated lyrics. Lop Burirat was her writer/producer, his music is always cool. Phumpuang died very young and many people pay tribute to her at Wat Thap Kradan in Suphan Buri. I hope to visit one day.
Jintara Poonlarp was the big superstar of the 90s and I usually like her too, her voice is awesome and there’s some straight up molam and nice luk thung ballads, but none of her songs stand out to me, they usually kind of sound the same. Just go with whatever the algorithm recommends, it should be good, though some is on the poppier side or has newer production and I don’t like those as much. I think she was a big deal as a molam artist who crossed over and went mainstream.
That actually gives a good overview of luk thung music over the decades.
Some other albums or songs I saved in my notes:
Isan Lam Plearn by Angkanang Kunchai - apparently represented the first fusion of molam and luk thung.
Sao Isan Ro Rak by Onuma Singsiri - Awesome album. The first song, the title track Sao Isan Ro Rak, is one of the Great Songs. The translated title is Issan Girl Waiting For Love, but when I hear it I’ve found love. And here are lyrics to the som tam song, that one is great too.
Apichat Pakwan - Electronic molam.
And there is so much more!
Phleng Phuea Chiwit (Songs for Life)
Phleng Phuea Chiwit (aka Songs for Life) is Thai political folk rock music, and it’s a good blend of Thai and western music, or at least some of it is. I like what I’ve heard though I haven’t spent a ton of time on it.
The quintessential band of this movement is Caravan, founded by student protestors in the 70s who made it big. After a brutal military crackdown on the protestors, they fled to the jungle to join communist guerilla units fighting against the state. After this fizzled out they went back to their music careers and became bigger than ever. You can read more about them here. To me, the music is a bit sleepy and gloomy and more historically/sociologically interesting, but I like it.
The superstar Phleng Phuea Chiwit band of the next generation is Carabao, who I’ve spent more time on and find to be more fun. You’ll notice them everywhere in Thailand. Go to 7-Eleven and you’ll find the Carabao energy drink, and there’s Carabao beer now. You’ll see Aed Carabao’s face all over. Okay, maybe they sold out, but they must have had more of a counterculture cool to them back in the day. I should probably learn more about them and their lyrics to understand their cultural importance. According to some stuff I read on Wikipedia they have some anti-capitalism mission, which I’ll try to keep in mind next time I’m at 7-Eleven.
Anyway I really really like pretty much all of their 80s albums, and their signature song Made in Thailand is awesome. Not all of their music is my thing but they cover a range of styles and there should be something for everyone. Some of it is rollicking 80s pop. I’d like to try some of their F&B products, waiting for Bean to Carabar chocolates to hit the market.
80s Pop
I find a lot of the non-luk-thung Thai pop music to be too derivative of western music to be interesting. But I have a soft spot for 80s pop music, and some of the Thai stuff is wonderful. There’s surely more good 80s pop that I don’t know about but I tend to put my energies more towards luk thung. These work for me in Bangkok but less so elsewhere.
I’ll start with my favorite group, Asanee and Wasan, whose music I find to be more creative and Thai feeling than most Thai pop music. Their song Yin Dee Mai Panyakhan is one of my all time favorite songs, and the video rules. Just so much fun. The somewhat similar sounding Bung Eun Tit Din is awesome too, and Goom Jai is another favorite. I also like their famous song where they sing the full title of Bangkok. In general I’ve liked their albums, but the singles stand out more.
Next is Bird Thongchai, who made more conventional 80s pop, but it’s very good! Some songs have a Phil Collins vibe, some a bit of George Michael. The first song I heard was Boomerang and I maybe listened to it 20 times in a row? The whole Boomerang album is good, and my favorite song of his might be the album’s second song Koo Gud, very different and more Thai sounding. It’s the sort of song that, even as a vehement karaoke hater and anti-alcohol zealot, makes me want to get drunk and sing along with it while reading the lyrics, whatever they mean. Other favorites include Duay Rak Lae Pook Pan and Sabai Sabai. In general I liked his 80s albums. His stuff in the 90s and 00s isn’t for me, though I guess his collaborations with Jintara Poonlarp were a big deal because they saw the biggest Thai pop and Luk Thung stars come together, signaling that luk thung had crossed over and gone mainstream when in the past they had very different audiences.
I also love Anchanlee Jongkadeekij. I know nothing about her other than her Thai Wikipedia page which says: “Anchalee is a Protestant , a member of the Church of Happiness [ 4 ] (affiliated with the Baptist Church in Thailand ), and was a presenter for the book Power of Life , which contains teachings from this denomination. She said that she used to be a lesbian, but stopped being a lesbian after converting.” This is sad, but somehow the music is better when you feel the repressed lesbian energy. And I did get some Wendy and Lisa vibes from the music. There’s more good random old Thai pop music on that Youtube page too.
21st Century Thai Music
I skipped the 90s because I didn’t really hear anything I liked from the 90s other than some luk thung stuff which doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel. I don’t like a lot of 21st century stuff either. I just don’t hear much innovation in the styles that appeal to me, but I’ll be forthright and admit my taste isn’t that varied or sophisticated. I’m sure there’s plenty of independent stuff that I haven’t discovered or am not cool enough to appreciate. Every year I google around for best of the year lists and rarely find anything I like very much.
My favorite 21st century Thai music is the album Rainbow Safari Polycotton by Folk9. I love this album! I like their earlier albums too but this one is the best. Playful, fun indie pop. There’s nothing really Thai about it musically, but it nonetheless feels original. I think it’s mostly in English, but like a weird mumbly non-English English. I can’t understand any of the lyrics. My favorite song was choco pie, I thought it was a cute way of saying chocolate pie and it made me want to eat chocolate pie, but some months later I started seeing a crappy looking packaged “choco pie” in supermarkets and I’ve since demoted that song to my least favorite. Maybe I‘ll try to find a recipe for a fancy ingredient version of choco pie so I can reclaim it, or I can keep deluding myself that the song is about chocolate pie. Every song is great though, so it’s okay.
I do like the turn of the millennium girl group China Dolls (I’m cheating a bit, first album in 1999). Their music is in a mix of Thai and Chinese. I really liked their first few albums. It’s like annoying video game music from 2+ decades ago, I mean that in a good way. Perfect for the “taking the skytrain and going to malls” part of exploring Bangkok, less good with everything else. My wife seemed disappointed in me for liking this music, and she usually doesn’t comment on such things.
The new “T-Pop” stuff, I don’t know. Mostly mediocre. I’ve liked some of it (Bowkylion’s music tends to be quite catchy), but nothing really stands out and there’s nothing very original. At best it sounds like pretty good western pop/R&B from 20 years ago. I guess this is the K-Pop formula? I don’t know much about K-Pop, but based on everything I’ve heard from the industry and from industries that have fallen under its orbit, it seems to be a sort of cultural black hole, a soulless imitation of western styles in Asian languages with no specificity that somehow keeps metastasizing, growing its audience and eating up anything that sounds remotely local to the extent that audiences lose any taste for their own cultures. Is that accurate? I maintain my view that we need more liberalism with most things but more right wing protectionist nationalism in music and food. People should be more upset about K-Pop.
Anyway, where was I? I really like both Ink Waruntorn and Polycat, nicely done retro R&B. I hear some boogie music, Prince, Jam & Lewis, Babyface, and the Neptunes in there, among others. I’m curious what their reference points are, if they went to the source or got it from Bruno Mars and other western retro artists. Or K-pop. Even though it’s not original it’s good stuff. I wish they’d find ways to fuse that with Thai music.
One artist I like who does an interesting blend of Thai and western styles is Rasmee, doing a sort of molam folk jazz thing. I also like Junlaholaan, I’d call this Thai folk pop. I’m always looking for more unique modern Thai music, hopefully I find some on future trips.
Any further recommendations in any category are appreciated!
Commentaires